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Teaching The South in the Early 1800s

The South in the Early 1800s

In the American South, the cotton industry grew alongside slavery. Slavery existed in the Americas long before cotton became an important cash crop, but as the demand for cotton grew, so did the need for people to work in the cotton fields. Picking and cleaning cotton was hard, back-breaking work, and plantation owners forced enslaved workers to labor from dawn to dark to get the job done. By the early 1800s, “King Cotton” and the institution of slavery had become linked in the antebellum South. How did this happen?

American Yawp
Stanford University Press

ESSENTIAL QUESTION:

Why did cotton and slavery both become so central to the southern economy in the 1800s?
STANDARDS:
RH.2 - Main Ideas

DEPTH OF KNOWLEDGE (DOK) LEVELS:

2
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